


Old Growth, New Blooms

by CatKing_Catkin



Series: Widomauk Week [7]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Accidental Marriage, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Beauregard Lionett & Mollymauk Tealeaf Friendship, Burns, Caleb Widogast Deserves Nice Things, Caleb Widogast Has Feelings, Caleb Widogast Needs a Hug, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Feelings Realization, Fire, Flirting, Flirty Mollymauk Tealeaf, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Love is stored in the golem, M/M, Mollymauk Tealeaf Comes Back, Mollymauk Tealeaf Lives, Nymphs & Dryads, POV Caleb Widogast, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Widomauk Week (Critical Role), of a sort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:34:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21826765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatKing_Catkin/pseuds/CatKing_Catkin
Summary: (Written for Widomauk Week 2019, Day 7, prompts "ashes" and "healing".)Thanks to Caduceus' magic and the will of the Moonweaver, Mollymauk Tealeaf has risen again as a dryad.Thanks to some ingenuity on Caleb's part, Molly is able to leave the tree growing up from his grave to resume his travels with the Mighty Nein.That doesn't mean there isn't something of a learning curve to adjust to in regards to Molly's new existence. When Caleb accidentally catches Molly with the edge of a fireball during a heated battle, the smell of scorched wood and burned lavender makes him especially hard to rouse from the shadows of his past.But some things haven't changed, and Molly manages to bring him back anyway, and something about the shock of their near miss leads them both to reach some long overdue realizations about what the future might hold for them both, and what "forever" could really mean.
Relationships: Mollymauk Tealeaf/Caleb Widogast
Series: Widomauk Week [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1382416
Comments: 5
Kudos: 139
Collections: Widomauk Week 2019





	Old Growth, New Blooms

The world was gone. The world was grey and fuzzy and muffled and gone but at least that meant he was safe and sheltered from the screaming.

It was as if he was standing in the middle of a grey, flat nothingness, alone and numb. He felt phantom heat on the back of his neck and knew, he just _knew_ that if he turned around he’d see the house aflame. He knew that he should turn around. He knew that he didn’t deserve to hide. This should never get easier. He did not deserve “easier”.

_“Hey, Caleb?”_

A voice from right beside him and far away at the same time. He didn’t know the voice. He knew that he should, but like so many other things, it was just…out of reach right now, and he barely had the strength to lift his head.

_“All right. Let’s take a walk.”_

And suddenly he was walking, or, or _being walked_. He could just about tell the difference. The heat was receding, growing distant. The pressure on his shoulders felt as if it were coming through a mattress’ worth of padding but he _could_ feel it.

The smell of smoke was not receding, but the smell of burned flesh was no longer surrounding him, choking him. He could smell burned wood, but that was it. Like a campfire. That was fine. That was safe. All he had to do was just let himself be walked away. It was all right if someone else decided he could leave this place.

Then, like a bolt between the eyes, he remembered just why the smell of burned wood was _not okay anymore_. Caleb blinked, and the world _slammed_ back into focus around him, hard and sharp and blinding. He looked left then right then registered the figure beside him, walking him away from the fight. Blind panic surged up like bile in his throat – he surged forward and grabbed their arms, staring up at them wildly. _“_ _Mollymauk_ _\--!”_

Molly stumbled back a pace with a startled yelp – and then he laughed, then he managed to pry one of Caleb’s hands off his arm and bring it to his mouth to kiss. “Present and accounted for. See? No harm done.”

Caleb just continued to stare, dimly aware that his breath was coming too fast and too sharp in his chest, that his vision was starting to tunnel from panic again. Because how could Molly say that? Caleb could see the evidence of harm _right there_ , in the blasted black marks that scorched the dryad’s flesh. Soot and ash and dead wood stained him from his cheek and down one side of his neck, over his shoulder and down his arm as far as the fingertips, blackened bark visible in the patches where his clothes had singed or burned away. Even the tip of one horn was broken off and jagged where the flames had caught at it.

Caleb hadn’t just burned a friend, he’d been so caught up in the midst of adrenaline and fear that he’d burned a friend made of wood and sap instead of flesh and blood. How could Molly just be _standing here_ right now? Caleb had heard him _screaming_ just before the world had gone away.

“Hey now. Hey. Just breathe. It’s time to breathe. Come here.”

Dimly, dully, he was aware of arms enfolding him and pulling him close and holding him fast. A hand braced on his chest, pushing slowly in, then relaxing its pressure in a slow, steady repetition, until he reflexively started to breathe with its guidance. He could feel another heartbeat against his back, the slow and steady rise and fall of someone breathing. Unthinking, he found himself counting the beats, and found the added repetition and regularly of rising numbers to be as grounding as the embrace.

Scents. Smells. Those, more than anything, cut through the burgeoning panic. Something green and light and earthy. Snowdrops and snapdragons and lavender flowers. 

“Fjord put me out after a couple of seconds,” Molly was saying, apparently confident that Caleb had come back to himself enough to hear. “It didn’t even go deep, and thanks to you the tree is still fine, Caleb, and that’s what matters most, and – here, see? Look.”

There was a hand on his cheek, gently urging him to look up, and part of him wanted to shy away from it and curl up even smaller amidst the embrace of wood and flowers, but the rest of him – a part that grew stronger by the day in the company of the Mighty Nein – dearly wanted to cling to the reassurance being offered.

So he lifted his head and looked Molly in the eye as the dryad in the shape of a tiefling trailed two fingertips – glowing a soft green – down the burned side of his face. New, vibrantly purple bark followed the trail like paint over a canvas, overtaking the burns even as he watched.

“Oh,” Caleb whispered, suddenly dizzy with relief as well as exhaustion.

Molly beamed. “See? Fine, probably for the best if we both try harder to remember I am very much the opposite of fire resistant nowadays, but that’s something we both have to work on. And in the meantime, as long as the tree’s all right – and it is, I repeat, thanks to you – then you’re not going to scar me so easily, Caleb.” 

“Thank god,” Caleb whispered, low and heartfelt. Molly had been through enough change, enough transformation. He deserved the chance to get used to his new body and learn to love his new appearance without Caleb mucking it up. The thought that he might have ruined that so early in Molly’s third life had made him want to curl up and die with shame. 

Not that he should have needed much work to learn to love his new body, in Caleb’s private but very definite opinion. Molly as a tiefling had been beautiful and striking. Molly as a dryad was just as much a work of art, but with a twist of the undeniably fey to him now, and fey things had always made Caleb’s breath catch in his throat. Even his tattoos had returned with him, stained into the rich purple wood that was now his flesh. His eyes were glowing red embers, his hair was lavender flowers that tended to shed petals wherever he went. Red snapdragons grew within a knot of wood where his heart should have been and snowdrops had a tendency to sprout up out of his joints. He’d pick them without care and braid them into a friend’s hair whenever the opportunity presented itself. 

Molly was lovely and Molly was alive and the momentary fear that he might have ruined either of those things had only made his usual collapse into catatonia even worse.

Thank all the gods for Fjord and his quick thinking and his continued ability to control water.

“I,” Caleb began, his voice little more than a croak. His throat was _so_ dry from smoke and from the aftereffects of dread. He closed his mouth, swallowed painfully, and tried again. “I will be more careful next time.”

“And so will I.” Molly reached up to cradle Caleb’s face in smooth, cool hands, leaned forward to kiss his forehead. “We live and we learn, Mister Caleb.”

“Despite all odds.” The smile he mustered up was weak and watery and probably didn’t look at all convincing. But at least, against all odds, it didn’t actually hurt, and when Molly started off back towards where the others were waiting, Caleb was able to follow under his own power, and the others believed him when he awkwardly mumbled that he was feeling better now.

It helped that, as it turned out, repairing himself cosmetically was something that Molly appeared to be able to do without pause or needing rest. Caleb left him to do just that with the aid of Jester and a hand mirror, while he went to check on Willy. 

After the golem had barely made it back to the Material Plane at all, there’d been no doubt in his mind that it would be unsuitable as a combatant. Repairs were prohibitively expensive, even with Yussah taking on the worst of it - they simply couldn’t afford to keep Willy functional if he got damaged too many times. 

Discovering Molly living very literally _in_ a newly grown tree on the side of Glory Run Road had, indirectly, given him an idea for a new purpose the golem might serve, one that would justify his presence with the Mighty Nein all on its own. 

He’d once fantasized about a hollowed out chest cavity as something for Frumpkin to ride in. Now it held a very small tree in a very small pot, tucked away behind a door of the strongest glass they’d been able to temper and lit by a permanent sunlight spell within the cavity. 

Of course, he hadn’t been responsible for taking such a neat and healthy cutting from the first tree - that had been entirely the doing of Caduceus and Nila, with some help from Nott for some of the more delicate, dextrous work. And it had been a deeply unpleasant, deeply painful task for the dryad who’s tree they were taking the cutting from. 

But Caleb prided himself on having had the idea in the first place that a cutting might be as good as the home tree. Sometimes it felt as if his mind wasn’t good for much in the long run. But twisting the nature of magic to his advantage, and that of his friends’…well. That, at least, was a good knack to have. 

“A watched tree never grows, y’know,” a blessedly familiar voice sing-songed from behind him. Caleb didn’t even have to look up. He just let out a quiet huff of laughter, basking in the sense of Molly kneeling down beside him to examine the tree in his turn. 

“ _Ja,_ well, maybe that is best,” he said, reaching out to rest his fingertips against the glass. “Much bigger and we will need to find you a bigger golem instead, hm?”

Molly draped himself theatrically against one of Willy’s shoulders, resting a hand against his forehead as if the very idea made him faint. “I could never! Willy and I have become _very_ attached, I’ll have you know! Why, I’d sooner cast out Beau than leave him behind.”

“Fuck you, Molly!” Beau called without glancing up from the gold she was counting out alongside Jester and Nott. 

“You’re the best, Beau!” Molly called cheerfully back. 

Caleb simply raised an eyebrow. “I suppose it helps that you are attached in, ah, nearly a very literal sense.”

“That, too. Whereas Beau and I being joined at the hip remains fortunately metaphorical, bless her thick skull.” Still leaning heavily against Willy’s unmoving form, Molly folded his hands and rested his chin on top of the golem’s head to better regard Caleb with glowing ember eyes. “Of course, I imagine we’ll have to sort out another golem _eventually_.”

“Very likely.” Caleb patted adamantine form fondly. “I don’t imagine Little Willy’s luck will hold out forever.”

“Not what I meant, actually. Not…exactly.”

“Ah?” Caleb looked up, and felt his heart jolt in his chest when he glanced up just barely quickly enough to see Molly look away from him. “Then, er…what did you mean? Exactly?”

“Well—” The tiefling-dryad’s fingers drummed an anxious tattoo on the top of Willy’s head. “I just mean that, y’know. This is nice, and all. But me being basically attached to Willy means that I’m basically attached to you, too. And don’t get me wrong. It’d be great if all of this lasted forever.” He gestured around at them, at the group in general, at the life they led, and finally looked back at Caleb with a small, tired smile. “But it won’t.”

Unspoken but implied, a truth they both knew all too well - _nothing ever does_. 

It was a thought that Caleb still mulled over sometimes on cold, dark nights - the idea that this group would not last forever. Given the sorts of people they were, there was every chance that they might not all settle down together when their travels came to an end. Nights spent eating around the same table in the magic mansion or with nothing but cheap inn walls between them had made up so much of his life so far, had made up some of the _best_ times in his life so far. The idea of trying to figure things out without seeing these seven fools every day seemed like an impossible task and yet an inevitable one in the same breath. 

All these thoughts are more flashed through his mind in an instant, and when Caleb blinked himself back to the present, he realized Molly was still talking. “So, you know. Just something to keep in mind, Mister Caleb. When you decide you’re ready to go your own way, I would _dearly_ appreciate it if you pulled some strings with your fancy magic friends to get me a portable flowerpot of my very own. Otherwise I’m afraid you won’t be rid of me. Sorry about that. But I don’t fancy withering away again any time soon - hope you understand.” 

Caleb opened his mouth to answer - and then he closed it, brow furrowing. Something about Molly’s tone itched at him. The words all made sense on their own. And yet the tone was…too casual. Too deliberate. _Guarded_. And Molly being guarded was nothing new as such, but precisely because he was so practiced at keeping things close to his heart, for him to show it this much meant that he was treading in uncharted, unfamiliar, anxiety-inducing territory.

It meant that it was very important to him that Caleb believed that he didn’t _actually_ care that much about what he was saying. That the matter of being bound to Caleb forever was as inconsequential as discussing who would take which watch shift. 

Caleb couldn’t entirely make out the shape of the reasons why Molly might be acting that way, not yet. But even knowing that much helped him pick his next words very carefully, and feel reasonably certain that they were the right ones. 

“When _you_ decide that you wish to go your own way, we will ensure that you have everything you need in order to do so, from golems to fertilizer. Until you make that choice—” Caleb shrugged. “—then I don’t mind you tagging along. It is hardly a hardship, Mollymauk.”

It set off a tiny little jolting thrill through his heart, the way his words made Molly brighten up so _obviously_. His gaze snapped back to Caleb’s face, his tail swaying behind him like a fascinated cat’s, just as it had when he was a creature of flesh and blood rather than wood and sap and flowers. 

“Oh?” he drawled, and the smile playing at his mouth was teasing and vibrant and so very full of life. He leaned a little over Willy’s head until barely inches separated them. “You’d better be careful, Caleb. A person might take that to mean that you wouldn’t mind me sticking around forever.”

Molly’s gaze was intent and intense and so very warm. He didn’t run as hot as he once had, but sometimes Caleb fancied that all his Infernal fire had been gathered in his eyes after he was transformed.

Either way, he found himself feeling bolstered, enough to smile back and lean forward and pat Molly twice on the cheek. “A person might not be entirely incorrect if they took that meaning, _meine_ _Freundin_.”

Molly’s eyes went wide, and Caleb felt as well as heard the shudder that ran through him, all down his spine to the very tip of his tail. And it still seemed so impossibly wonderful to Caleb that Molly should have such a reaction to those words from him. And yet, looking at his friend now, even he couldn’t disbelieve that the reaction was real and the feelings were meant. 

Disbelief became even more impossible when Molly suddenly leaned forward even further, laid a hand on the back of Caleb’s neck, and drew him in close. For a wild moment Caleb wondered if Molly might be about to kiss him properly, but…no. They were still surrounded by the others, still very much in view. That still would have been too much.

For now. 

And even then, the warm caress of Molly’s voice against his ear still made Caleb shiver and flush as sure as a kiss would have. “So should I make us both rings, then?” the once-tiefling murmured, low and heated. 

Caleb swallowed past a suddenly, painfully dry throat. The placid, dormant adamantine golem that still stood between them might as well have not been there at all. “Well,” he whispered. “I might like to see what you could come up with.”

Molly chuckled, then kissed his cheek, then all at once he pulled away and straightened up and stretched as if nothing had happened at all. “Someday, maybe,” he said, offering Caleb a wink and a flower from his hair, then stepping around Willy and brushing past him to join the others. “Maybe someday soon.”

Caleb took a moment to watch him go, to cradle the sprig of lavendar in his hand and against his heart, to think about how quickly fortunes could change and to marvel at the fact that, just sometimes, it seemed they could change or the better.

He marveled at a second chance that he did not deserve but had every reason to make the best of, for the sake of a dryad with flowers in their horns and hair. 

Then Caleb tucked the flower carefully behind his ear, and hurried to catch up with the others so they could get back on the road.


End file.
